A Senator’s Diary, Apr. 22, 2015

The Ol’ Duff has thrived in the public eye pretty much his whole life. But even he has to admit the recent level of attention is starting to wear a little thin.

It’s hard enough to listen to all the negative aspersions tossed my way day after day in the courtroom, but then to have it all picked over and twisted and re-hashed and exaggerated in the goddamn media is getting to be a bit much.

Got a bit of a pick-me-up this morning though, an email from my cousin Snuffy, who lives somewhere in the vicinity of my primary residence. Snuffy’s always been kind of the intellectual in the family.

He teaches English literature and shop class at the high school. I’m sure I’d recognize him if I saw him.

Anyway, here’s a little something he sent me with a note saying, “Just in case you have to cop an Island pity plea and you can’t afford L. Ian MacDonald anymore….”

It’s called “Doesn’t an Islander Have Feelings, Too?”

They have disgraced me and cost me half a million; laughed at my expenses, mocked my weight gains, scorned my location, thwarted my bargains; and what’s their reason? I am an Islander! Hath not an Islander eyes? Hath not an Islander hands, organs, dimensions, senses, afflictions, passions? Fed from the same Quiznos, hurt by the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

OK, well, maybe we’ll drop that last line, but overall the Ol’ Duff would have to say that’s pretty darn good writing.

So, thanks, Snuff. I’ll get Gerry to send you a cheque from the cement company when things blow over

3 comments on “A Senator’s Diary, Apr. 22, 2015”

Says Shakespeare…”What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.”

In his autobiography, “Remembering,” Eric Kierans makes one mention of Mike Duffy. Kierans was debating Donald Macdonald on free trade in Halifax. He writes, “This meeting was chaired by Mike Duffy, the CTV broadcaster, who came up to me with some glee and wanted to know how much I was getting for my part in the panel.
“Nothing,” I told him.
“Boy,” he said. “I’m getting $2,000.”